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Since this entry gives us a sneaky backdoor to talk about current music, and since the song in question isn’t bunny-bait quite yet… I thought I would note that last night, for the first time, I found myself buying a track on iTunes just to see what Tom writes about it here in a decade’s time.

I am fond of Sukhdev, in print and in person, and this is an enthusiastic summary — but Bob’s decision to discuss a fixed and well defined slice of history (and not attempt to bring it right up to LAST NIGHT’S CHARTS) was extremely clearly explained. It’s odd (and telling?) how resolute reviewers seem to be in reading it as a comment on the quality (or lack of it) of music since that period ended.

Also the idea that “exuberant and cross-generational linkages” have become the norm in writing about music is simply (and weirdly) false.

Also, the bits where Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan get ignored in favour of Donovan and whoever.. Well, to be fair, I have not read up to the Donovan section, having only just got through the DYLAN CHAPTER! but Aretha f. gets plenty praise..

Yes, but there SS is just acknowledging that orthodox rock history allows THIS AMOUNT OF SPACE for certain people, and bob on the whole gives them a lot less, into order to discuss at considerable length people generally omitted. A History of Modern Pop that actually omitted the Beatles would be a very bold project indeed.

Orthodox rock history being a bit of a strawman there in terms of well-researched doorstep-shaped books meaning to cover EVERYTHING. Charlie Gillett’s The Sound of the City, which I actually really like, only gets up to the late 70s (because that’s when it was written) and its later stages inevitably now feel quite dated. Donald Clarke’s The Rise and Fall of Popular Music starts well but overreaches far into decades DC has no sympathy for or grasp of. The Rolling Stone book is as variable as the contributors, and anyway not really a history per se. What else is there?

Re 130/131: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but my feeling has been that the orthodox rock position has always been stronger in ordinary punters than people who write about music. They have a greater stake in the notion that The Clash really, really matter and The Saturdays don’t. Apart from anything else, most sane people immersed in any subject will find themselves tinkering with unorthodox positions just to stop getting bored, even if they can’t bring themselves ideologically to swap sides (hence ‘guilty pleasures’).
Whereas if you are either a) 15 and this all new and crucial to you or b) only get to listen to your old vinyl when the wife and kids are out of the bloody house, it’s easier to maintain a hard line.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but my feeling has been that the orthodox rock position has always been stronger in ordinary punters than people who write about music. They have a greater stake in the notion that The Clash really, really matter and The Saturdays don’t.

Does anyone really feel this other than a few sad old men who look like Vince Vaughn and hang around used record shops? I think you’ll find that the majority of “ordinary punters,” e.g. my mum, are far more familiar with the Saturdays (always on TV, always turning up) than the Clash (whom the general public don’t know apart from that lot who did that Levi’s advert).

Also it’s not “tinkering with unorthodox positions,” it’s “providing a different opinion or point of view.” Why does every piece of music writing have to retread the same old story, toe the party line? Is it down to the resentment of a select group of people who have suddenly been told that their world is only a small corner of a far larger and more complex world?

even if they can’t bring themselves ideologically to swap sides

I think you’re confusing music appreciation with Dungeons and Dragons.

Re 135: I’m not saying the bulk of ordinary punters, I’m just saying those are attitudes often ascribed to (non-specified) critics (and academics) that I’ve more often encountered among, say, the readers of Mojo or Uncut rather than the staff of those magazines. It was a stance certainly held by a lot of teenage Sounds readers back in the day.

‘I think you’re confusing music appreciation with Dungeons and Dragons.’

I think Mark M’s point is not so much about the current relative public profiles of The Clash and The Sundays, it’s more about where one is most likely to find the orthodox rock position.

I feel like I’m much more likely to hear “don’t even play their instruments” / “don’t even write their own songs” etc from people randomly chatting about music in the office than I am to encounter them in rowckwrite these days. That might reflect more on my chosen rockread, of course.

This was always Dave Q’s point – rockism is the populist music fan position, it’s not something imposed from above. The arguments deplored by pop writers – authenticity, test-of-time, who’s faking it – are the ones most easily reached for in any office and pub.

Now, the good news for “pop” is that easily reached for arguments tend to have very little to do with actual behaviour, and the rockist arguments are so flexible they can be applied to almost ANYTHING – pretty much any record over 10 years old on YouTube gets ‘why don’t they make them like this anymore? modern music is plastic crap’ commentary no matter how woeful it seemed at the time.

And as somebody said in some book or other, the best year of Pop was the one where you first discovered pop. e.g. I always rated 1983, but that was more a re-discovery. I refuse to back my pick by going back and looking..

Sounds excellent, Marcello.. shared the link on Facebook to one of the creators of “200 Worst Songs”.. a very good blog full of classic British cynicism (though it lays on SU bar politics a bit too thickly), but no point linking it here as it would be bunny armageddon.

I’ve always though that if there’s a lazy critical consensus, it’s towards what Tom called The Big Cultural Stiffy For Other People’s Misery owtte, for self conscious ‘intelligence’ and for unglamorous white, male, middle-class people who look like the majority of the writers (cf Dave Lee Roth’s comment about Elvis Costello), rather than Rock per se.

In general: but isn’t it part of the fun of discussing popular music to get riled up when you hear or read somebody heaping unstinting praise on something which is quite obviously garbage, or the reverse?

No, because either way you’re still dealing with subjectivity. I find persuading people a better method these days, coupled with trying to find the good points in what looks like unpromising material (i.e. most of 1983’s number one albums). Rather than just say “hyuk hyuk what were people thinking” I endeavour to find out why people were thinking what they thought, and what the findings say about me and/or those times and/or the present day.

re148: Apart from the music on the soundtrack there’s curiously little in the film* to suggest what year it’s meant to be. If there is any significance to the date it might be because Irwin’s rather cynical but effective teaching methods are clearly about to usurp Hector’s learning-for-the-love-of-learning approach.
One of the most shocking moments in ‘The History Boys’ is when the Headmaster ferociously turns on Hector and his methods (‘Screw the renaissance, and literature and Plato and Michaelangelo and Oscar Wilde and all the other shrunken violets you people line up’) thus making his bias perfectly clear.

* The play quotes ‘It’s A Sin’ by the Pet Shop Boys so is presumably set a few years later.

Tom, by all means remove this comment if he wants to play it down, but did I spot something on Twitter yesterday to the effect that Wichita has become a dad? Warmest congratulations to Mr and Mrs Lino and rockin’ Len.

A contestant on today’s Pop-Master, Paul from Stockton-On-Tees, told the convivial Ken Bruce that he had recently seen St Etts and not only loved it but had been invited backstage “by their keyboard player” and thought what pleasant people they all were. Ken agreed and told Paul and the nation that he, Ken, appeared on St Etts new album. He too mentioned what nice folk they were. Neither went the obvious extra mile by singling out the divine Sarah for extra praise. Paul won but didn’t get the three in ten.

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Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here

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